This week’s launch of Future 2: Lightfall is a Huge stream of players on Steam and console To take a look at Bungie’s subsequent enlargement for the web shooter. Lightfall, the penultimate story of the Gentle and Darkness saga that paved the way in which for The Closing Form in 2024, shifts the bigger plot to the ultimate chapters of its 10-year story because it critiques the sport methods. Nevertheless, the overall response from the neighborhood appears to inform a distinct sort of story.
Following the February 28 launch, avid gamers on social media, Future 2 reddit, and YouTube are actively voicing their considerations concerning the present state of the enlargement. Whereas the Future neighborhood hasn’t been shy to share their opinions, there was a wave of criticism about Lightfall’s core narrative, Neomuna’s new setting, the complicated methods to unlock Strand, and the way tough it’s for brand spanking new and returning gamers. return to a modified expertise.
Proper now, Steam reviews on Lightfall have a “mostly negative” rating, gamers disapprove of the sport’s narrative and general strategy to the annual reset. For now, we’ll go over some key takeaways from the neighborhood and what Bungie coated in its newest challenge. Blog post on Bungie This Week.
Foremost Narrative
lots has occurred in The Destiny universe since its 2014 debut. After main clashes with the Fallen, Hive, Vex, Cabal and Taken factions, the Guardians have now fashioned alliances with splinter factions from their opposing armies and even embraced some restricted forces from the darkish. In the meantime, a brand new risk within the type of The Witness, a consultant of The Darkness and Future 2’s present main villain, seeks the Traveler for his personal nefarious functions.
On the finish of the Season of the Seraph—a now-deprecated occasion that befell all through December and into late February—we noticed the Witness lead his Floor Fleet to Earth to seize the Traveler. With the Traveler simply out of orbit, the Guardians and their allies stood up in opposition to the Black Fleet, resulting in the Fall of Gentle occasions. On this present enlargement, the Guardians and allied forces journey to Neomuna, a secret metropolis occupied by the Shadow Legion on Neptune. Led by Emperor Calus, now a servant of The Witness and a returning D2 12 months 1 villain, he tries to discover a hidden energy supply within the secret metropolis.
I am sufficiently old to recollect when The Veil had a brand new race of enemies to emerge from the pyramid ships. https://t.co/SFtzOBe8Jg
— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) March 2, 2023
Initially, Neomuna and its new characters, The Cloud Striders, have been promising. Nevertheless, the general response waned considerably as the dimensions and story of the marketing campaign turned out to be smaller than anticipated. Moreso, the sense of urgency proven within the opening act of the marketing campaign was silenced as soon as gamers settled into Neomuna and commenced interacting with characters like Nimbus, the comedian reduction of the story. This has precipitated some gamers to view the marketing campaign as much less critical than they need to have been, making it extra in keeping with earlier expansions.
What’s extra, the plot particulars and storyline of this enlargement have confused followers a lot that well-liked Future 2 creators, corresponding to Paul Tassi and D2 data specialist my name is byf launched movies explaining why the marketing campaign’s carefree tone undermines the bigger story and what number of key plot particulars and occasions have been launched with out a lot rationalization. One level of rivalry was that Strand was included within the plot and the way he did not supply a lot of a proof for the sport’s origins.
“Strand’s full involvement within the narrative would not work, it feels just like the boundaries have been put simply to make use of this new subclass, and that is an important detriment to the bigger class. [invasion] land as a result of [Strand] Widespread D2 lore content material creator My Identify Is Byf stated that Lightfall is lastly all about that. “As a seasonal story, that may be nice, however as an enlargement story, when an actual assault on the Traveler occurs – I imply, come on? [Strand] It simply pops up out of nowhere and isn’t defined within the story.”
Probably the most frequent complaints among the many neighborhood focuses on particulars about “The Veil,” a mysterious drive that the sport presents as a deeply rooted however not too long ago mentioned thriller. This modification in plot has additionally led to memes and on-line jokes which have grow to be an everyday sight on Future 2’s Reddit.
I am the quote-on-quote “data father” of Future 2, and I am unable to let you know what the Veil is as a result of I do not know.
Whereas Bungie has after all been tight-lipped about particulars about The Veil and different narratives, the builders have said that Lightfall’s story will progress within the coming weeks and that the present Season of Defiance occasion, which launched with Lightfall, will even add extra vital particulars. story.
Getting the Strand
One in every of Lightfall’s standout additions is the Strand subclass, the primary new gameplay model for the reason that Past Gentle enlargement in 2020. to deal additional harm. Thus far, the category has been effectively acquired, and there are a selection of stunt movies that present how far the actors can take the grappling.
Grapples feels good!#MOTW #destiny2 @DestinyTheGame @Bungie pic.twitter.com/Qfla8VK3x7
— Senseileon (@Senseileon_) March 1, 2023
Nevertheless, the neighborhood’s drawback with Strand is that it feels very understated at launch. Very similar to Stasis from Past Gentle, Strand’s development and power-up have been meant to tie in to future story beats added in weekly challenges and updates. Principally, which means that progress is tied to a particular schedule dictated by Bungie’s launch of latest content material. This has raised considerations that the brand new class can be restricted for a very long time – these considerations have been sharpened by gamers who unlocked the Strand for everlasting use after the marketing campaign, discovering that the signature pinching means has an extended cooldown and different unlocks should be bought. With a considerable amount of assets that may take time to earn. That is along with being fairly weak, lowering the sensation of utilizing a chaotic and unknown component.
In an try to repair this challenge, Bungie introduced the discharge of a brand new replace on March 2 that may enable subclass gamers to unlock all out there tracks. This new replace will unlock Strand correctly and provides gamers new choices within the energy mill and alternatives to attempt the sport.
“We have determined to launch a reside replace for all gamers that may unlock the power to earn all the Strand Trailers pack,” Bungie stated. to get them, this must be a good way for everybody to expertise extra of what Strand has to supply earlier than beginning subsequent week’s raid.”
A Refocused Gear System
Future 2 has added a revised gear system and useful resource administration, together with new story content material and placement. Beforehand, mods for armor items have been set to particular gadgets and likewise relied on unlocks from Seasonal Occasions – new ones resetting progress. If gamers wished to take part in sure occasions, some construct mods – corresponding to anti-barrier, overpower, and different fight buffs – have been very important to success and required gamers to adapt their gear. With the brand new enlargement, constructing crafting has been overhauled and added many seasonal artifacts, perks that not should be positioned on a personality.
Because the scope of construct crafting expands, the Future 2 neighborhood has expressed considerations about the very best choices for equipping characters in gentle of the numerous revised mods. Additionally, this additionally made some favourite neighborhood builds unusable and required further effort to regulate character uploads. Added to that is the brand new armor recharge system, which is now a revised model of the phased out core effectively mods designed to strengthen your character’s defenses. A brand new system brings again the core challenge of permitting you to have sure game-specific buffs added to your character or cope with extraordinarily tough encounters.
In one other video, the favored Future 2 creator datto He known as out along with his ideas on modding. He remained extra optimistic concerning the system than most different followers, though he nonetheless said that he wanted extra time on it.
“There’s a good basis to construct on [mods] now and hopefully Bungie plans to introduce extra because the yr goes on. Nevertheless, those that understood the system previously at the moment are left with a much less fascinating world of mods and development. The equivalents of those base mods at the moment are in seasonal unlocks and my concern is that the construct crafting can be purely artifacts and never rather more.
Right now, Bungie has but to handle considerations with mod methods, however the studio has added an replace to regulate for recurring points with sure power-ups from the sport. Thus far, it is nonetheless early and the neighborhood remains to be testing the capabilities of latest class updates and mods. Within the coming weeks, we’ll have a clearer image of how the brand new armor mod system handles itself.
street forward
Whereas Lightfall’s launch was comparatively uneventful on a technical degree, its enlargement content material has grow to be the topic of scrutiny by the Future 2 neighborhood. Aside from these bigger points, the neighborhood’s response to the annual renewal has been optimistic. Nevertheless, there’s nonetheless quite a lot of room for enchancment, given the character of Future 2 as a reside service sport that may evolve within the yr earlier than The Closing Form’s launch.
It is too early to inform how Lightfall will match into the Future 2 expansions in only a few days. Nevertheless, with The Root of Nightmares raid launching quickly on March 10, we’ll begin to see the place the story of Lightfall and its implications for Future 2’s bigger plot go from right here.
For extra particulars on the present standing of Future 2: Lightfall and our upcoming evaluate of the sport, keep tuned to IGN.
Alessandro Fillari is a contract author at IGN.